Distributed server systems may include a central server distributing work tasks to any number of communicatively coupled computer systems. The central server may be a server computer executing typical server class software applications or software services. The communicatively coupled computer systems may be discreet server class computer systems, personal computer systems, or the like. The communicatively coupled computer systems may be located in the same physical location or may be distributed at different physical locations connected by a network.
The work tasks distributed by the central server may be any type of task, command, or function call that may be executed in computer software by a computer system. For example, a work task may be a calculation, a command to store data, or the like. The central server may send a work task to a communicatively coupled computer system using any typical computer communication method. For example, the central server may send a work task using the hypertext transport protocol (HTTP), a remote procedure call (RPC) over HTTP, the distributed component object model (DCOM) system, or the like.
The central server may further execute software applications or software services to manage and/or maintain the current “state” of the distributed server system. More particularly, the central server may represent the overall distributed server system to an entity external to the distributed server system. Therefore, an external entity seeking information regarding the status of the distributed server system may communicate with the central server and the central server may respond with the current state of the overall distributed server system. The communicatively coupled computer systems may also maintain the current state of the distributed server system; however, it may not be necessary for the communicatively coupled computer systems to do so as the current state is managed by the central server. In addition, the central server may ensure the communicatively coupled computer systems are each in the same “state” with regard to each other communicatively coupled computer system.
The amount of work tasks performed by such a distributed server system may be related to the number of computer systems that are communicatively coupled to the central server. For example, each communicatively coupled computer system may have a fixed rate at which it may perform work tasks. If more total work tasks are assigned to the distributed server system than the communicatively coupled computer systems are able to perform, the distributed server system may experience a slowdown in the overall completion of work tasks. More communicatively coupled computer systems may be added to the distributed server system to increase the work task capacity of the distributed server system and may reduce such overall work task completion slowdowns.
However, the result of adding more communicatively coupled computer systems to the distributed server system may be one or more communication problems. For example, the central server may be able to efficiently send work tasks and receive communications from a small number of communicatively coupled computer systems. The work capacity of the distributed server system may increase with each added communicatively coupled computer system. Correspondingly, the amount of communications performed by the central server may also increase. As a result, the central server may not be able to efficiently manage the increased number of communications and there may be a decrease in the overall number of work tasks that may be performed by such a distributed server system.
Such a distributed server system may employ one or more backup computer systems configured to redundantly store information. Such backup computer systems may also be known as backup managers or backup servers. The backup managers or backup servers may be configured to restore the central server to a particular “state” that may have been redundantly stored. However, in communicating changes of state to the one or more backup managers or servers, the central server may also increase the total number of communications that are performed, again resulting in a decrease of communication performance within the distributed server system.
A system in which the number of communicatively coupled computer systems may be increased without adversely impacting the communication capacity of the central server may be useful.